Dancing in the Attic
by A Girl Named Disaster
Summary: Ginny's in love with the dark lord, Hermione is under the mistaken impression that she'll get to live beyond twenty-two. They're both rather lost. Contains sex, failings, and impossible futures. (ff, don't say I never warned you)


_Disclaimer: Well see, I did own the HP characters for about a day, but then they sued for sexual harassment, so now they belong to J.K. Rowling. o_o Sad sad, I know. *sniff* I'll get over it… No but really, they're not mine and I'm not under some weird delusion that they are, I'm just having my fun and seeing how many weird plots I can fit within the boundaries of logic._

_Rating: C'est R._

_Warnings: Femmeslash m'dears. Rampant femmeslash. And if you don't like reading that, then I can't imagine why you clicked on this. So if you're just going to flame after you read this, kindly take your head out of your ass and go read something that doesn't stretch your impossible moral ideals out of shape. Oops. I hafta work on not bitching. *sigh* Sorry monkeys, I really do love you. I'm just cranky. Oh, and there's also underage drinking, which seems to be popping up in quite a few of my little tales._

**Dancing in the Attic**

****

A sort of rustling white noise goes on before the song on the old, wax record starts. Hermione has spent the last six minutes joyously explaining how muggle music-playing devices work. Ginny lets her ramble on while the pair of them sit on the dusty floor of the attic. She wonders when the ghoul will turn up and throw something, it never fails to. Hence the reason most of her family has stopped coming up here at all. The last time she can remember seeing the attic was a few years ago, when she helped her mother bring down a new set of candles for the kitchen table. It was dim then, they brought a lantern up to see around in the shrouded darkness. But now, at four in the afternoon, light fills the cluttered room and the sun warms the floorboards Ginny has her eyes fixed on.

            Light, like honesty… It bares the attic's secrets, revealing even the ugliest places, like over there—where a pipe is leaking and the wall is stained with water damage. She can only imagine how devastated they'd all be if they forced light into her mind, beamed a flashlight around until they saw reality taking shape. She knows so much about the Order's inner workings… so much. And Tom loves hearing every last detail.

            The song ends and Hermione reaches to the pile of records, placing another one on the gramophone and lowering the needle. A flick of the wrist and different music starts.

            "What is this? It's familiar," Ginny says, smiling.

            "Oh I don't know. Ballroom music of some sort." Her friend shrugs, messy curls sliding around her shoulders. She is neither pretty nor alluring, just a person. Another blurred face, Ginny thinks. But as she studies Hermione's hands; thin, veined and delicate, for once a person comes into focus. There's a callus on the top joint of her middle finger from scribbling determinedly with a quill all these years. She must be under the impression that people pay attention to things they read. This naïve shortcoming of hers brings laughter bubbling from somewhere in Ginny's chest. "What?" Hermione's eyes dance, searching for the joke.

            "Nothing, 'Mione." She shakes her head and then springs up impulsively, dusting her jeans off. "Dance with me." She receives a curious stare again. "Come on, I know you miss those lessons Fred and George gave us last summer."

            "Alright. Do you remember any steps?"

            "Uh…" The girl next to Ginny laughs, and it's almost musical. Almost.

            "We'll improvise then, how's that?"

            "Ok."

            The brief errors in the record make timing tremendously hard. Hermione closes her eyes, counting steps and concentrating too much.

            "Right, one two… back, one two—ow! Why'd you step on my foot, we almost had it!"

            "We did not." Ginny rolls her eyes and removes her right hand from Hermione's waist. "Let's go downstairs, mum probably needs a hand with lunch."

            "Spoilsport, it was your idea. You can at least try and get it right." Stubborn brown eyes fixed on her and no one else. Ginny sighs and starts the recording over.

            It's something like dancing after a while. Turning and sidestepping in unison. Lead and then retreat. She flings Hermione out in an impromptu twirl and the other girl squeaks in surprise before falling into rhythm again, finishing the spin and then recoiling back into Ginny's arms once more. There's a hint of a flush over them both from laughing at their own mistakes and dancing around the room. The girls flounder suddenly at the sound of the ghoul, who has made his appearance at last—or at least made himself heard. Ignoring the sporadic banging noises, they turn and twirl, advance and dip, while thunderheads gather outside. Storm clouds rolling in.

*                      *                      *

            Hermione doesn't know she has danced with death. Red hair and freckles just aren't the conventional casing for such a sinister thing. Everyone she has ever known at the establishment of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, will die in the near future because of Ginny. Ginny will dig the graves of her own family one day.

            But she danced with her. Flighty and contented from the mid-afternoon sun, they had danced alone in the attic, long after the music stopped.

            They catapult down a dirt path cloaked in darkness, turned muddy by the pouring rain. Almost out of hearing of The Burrow now.

            "Remind me why I'm getting soaked in the middle of the bloody night again?!" Hermione yells at her fellow escapee, right ahead of her. Ginny' bare feet are squelching in the mud as she runs.

            "Because you always follow me!" She's laughing. They swerve off the path onto a smaller one that leads downhill. Ginny loves it here, what's left of her heart swells at the sight of water glinting below them. It looks restless and disturbed from the rain steadily breaking its surface. Ginny whoops and pulls her shirt off as she nears the lake. They finally stop running to scramble out of their pants. In the process, Hermione lands clumsily in the small strip of sand by the water's edge. Ginny doubles over laughing. God bless Harry for sharing the firewhisky he nicked.

            "Shut up, your balance isn't too grand right now either." Hermione waves her taunts away.

            Ginny splashes waist-deep into the water, even as she feels the electricity of the storm above her, pulsing in the clouds, warm and alive. 'I dare you', she thinks at the sky. Hermione can't decide whether to grumble or giggle and settles for a strange mixture of the two, wading out to where Ron's little sister is. "Ohh your mum would kill me if she found out we were out here," she says, falling back and allowing the lake to catch her. When she surfaces, Ginny is a little indignant.

            "Why you and not me?" she asks, already annoyed because she knows the answer.

            "I'm older. Supposed to do responsible things like not go running out to swim in my skivvies, drunk, in a lightning storm."

            "Ah well. My horrid influence has won. Again." Ginny smirks, her dark pink lips forming the perfect expression of triumph.

            There isn't much time to be stupid and young… the world is ending fast around them. Really there are only about five years left, at most. So many blurry faces, hurtling towards their deaths, and who gives a shit? Not Virginia Weasley. Except now there is one clear face, and she can picture her dying. Like a cut flower, bleeding quietly in its vase for days. It's her fault, but she didn't ask to fall in love with an evil man bent on world domination. Nothing happens because you ask for it.

            Rain on the older girl's glowing, Gryffindor face and those careful writer's hands. Spilling over her collarbones and sliding down sunburned arms. Small waves mill around, the water rendering their undergarments completely useless at concealing things, their lithe bodies illuminated by the random flashing in the clouds. The rain could be hiding tears, for all Ginny knows. It could be hiding anything. It's as heavy as ever, coming down in torrents from the black, threatening sky overhead. "What are you going to do when fall comes?" Ginny asks. Quite loudly, to make herself heard over the rumbles and explosions in the sky. Hermione looks over from where she's swimming around on her back. She smiles the smile of dreamers, of someone who thinks they have their future worked out. "Do you have a job yet?"

            She wants to hear her carefully thought out plan. She wants to hear about the mortgaged home in the suburbs, the budding journalism career, Ron playing in the yard with a dog named Rex, or Rover, or Fluffy. Both of them together, plodding towards materialistic success.

            "I've been talking to some people down at… what's the name?" Alcohol runs though her veins. Ginny swims, and she jumps over rowdy masses of swirling, dark water. It looks like gallons of ink in between flashes of lightning. The light shows for a second that it's only water, clear and with good intentions. "Yeah but, um… I've pretty much got a job there," Hermione says in her special voice that only surfaces when she's incapacitated. Rather disconnected and girlish.

            "What do you think it'll do for you… living your lovely, generic life?"

            "What?" Hermione fumbles, uncertain of what she's heard. Ginny comes out of the water, stands up. Like some sea-creature emerging from a world of legend.

            "Nothing, 'Mione." The creature gathers Hermione in her arms, holds her close. Nuzzles into the curve where neck meets shoulder. Hermione sighs and she's lightheaded. She keeps forgetting to tell Ginny that they really shouldn't be in a lake with all that lightning up there. Damp breasts press against one another companionably with a cold, hard lump wedged in between that Ginny feels and steps back to investigate. She takes it in her palm, a bronze locket with pictures inside. The cool chain pulls against Hermione's neck while she opens it.

            "Your parents?" she questions, disliking the happy faces smiling out at her from the pendant.

            "I've had it since I was six." Hermione nods. Ginny tangles her hands in her unreasonably curly hair and doesn't comment.

            She can't make up for what she's doing to Hermione and wizardkind. No amends can be made. But there's a desperate sense of trying when Ginny's pulse races, caught up in the backwards kisses she's getting. Not from a boy, the way they handle everything is different. Fast and hard and usually ending with them on top, drained, while the girl underneath them wonders if she came or not. There's sand in Ginny's hair from lying on the shore and it bothers her. But it's in the background and she whispers and moans and curves a gentle tongue around everything that she thinks will feel good.

            It's all just rushed faces, lost identities, going so fast that they're out of focus, rushing to their deaths. She sees them, she hears them… mingling with rain, mingling with the dusty corners of her mind, blending with the pungent smell of sex and the taste of Hermione's lipgloss. They'll be nauseous later from too much of a strong drink, and probably spend the day avoiding Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, puking in the sunny bathrooms at The Burrow—the ones with the carefully laid-out, checkered floor tiling in them.

            Thunder rumbles. Hermione's non-existent house in the suburbs probably has checkered tiles too.


End file.
